Yesterday
by RemedyChill
Summary: Jubilee and Xavier try to save a young mutant boy from an angry mob. The only story I ever wrote that I expected to earn me the title 'You Bastard'.
1. Default Chapter

I invented the character of Anthony. Everyone else is the property of Marvel. This story is for intellectual and entertainment purposes only and not for profit.  
  
Yesterday  
  
Jubilee dropped down on to the couch and began to pull off her roller blades. She was intent of finding the Professor, but after the last time she bladed across the newly polished wooden floors, she had sworn never to do it again under any circumstances.  
  
Even circumstances as strange as these.  
  
Unbeknownst to her however, she was radiating shock, fear and disbelief. Almost immediately, telepaths from all over the mansion began to flock to the downstairs lounge area where Jubilation Lee was lacing up her sneakers.  
  
"Jubilee?" Jean asked timidly, being the first one to arrive.  
  
"I just saw something disturbing." Jubilee confirmed.  
  
"More disturbing than yesterday?" Jean sat down next to her. On any other day it would have been too close. But it was not today.  
  
"It might have been related to yesterday." Jubilee pressed on through the confusion. But it made little sense.  
  
"Did something happen in town? We told you to be careful." Jean didn't mean to sound accusatory but the tone did it's job anyway, and in a moment, Jubilee had risen off the couch and was standing with her back to Jean, looking down to the end of the drive way.  
  
"I didn't make it to town. I didn't make it past the gate."  
  
Jean sat quietly for a moment, perhaps afraid to press the girl further.  
  
"I know that things like yesterday happen. I see them on the news, and as an X-Man I've seen worse intent and worse violence." Jubilee noticed her right hand was shaking and she grabbed it with her left to steady it. Unfortunately, her left hand was shaking too and she had to hug them both to her chest to stop them.  
  
"But yesterday was so close to home?" Jean asked.  
  
"I don't know." Jubilee bit her lip. "But I saw him today."  
  
"Him?" The professor asked as he glided gently and soundlessly in to the room.  
  
"The boy they beat to death outside the gates yesterday." Jubilee looked the Professor in the eye. "I just saw him at the foot of the dive way. On our side of the gate looking out. Only, here's the deal Professor, he wasn't alive. He was a ghost." Jubilee let the words hang there in the cool and quiet room.  
  
The Professors mind raced with plausible explanations and he wrestled with the desire to dismiss this entirely. His deeper and darkest desire was to pluck the memory form every living soul on the planet and carry the burden alone.  
  
"Can you show me where?" Became his only answer.  
  
A moment later Jubilee and Xavier were standing at the end of the driveway. "He was right about here Professor." Jubilee tried to stand in the right spot.  
  
"Come her then Jubilee, and I'll see if I can sense anything." Jubilee stepped aside and Professor Xavier pressed his fingers to his temples.  
  
Suddenly his head shot up and his eyes flew open. His hands dropped from his head and he gasped.  
  
"Professor!" Jubilee reached out and touched him. He felt electric, as though current were running though him, and now it had caught her too.  
  
The current felt colder and colder, but it brought with it images and flashes of events that neither recognized. And when it cleared, Jubilee was alone.  
  
"Professor?" She looked around. But no one was there. Her posters all hung in place and she was alone in her room.  
  
And a voice spoke within her head "Jubilee! Come here, quickly! I'm in the arboretum." And she knew it was the Professor's. "No. Wait. On second thought, meet me at the gate! Now!"  
  
And then the cry went out louder, more all encompassing "To the gate my X- Men! Danger! A young boy!"  
  
And the mansion surged with life and power. Great rippling muscles drove toward the front gate, while the sky became dotted and streaked with mutants on the move. Xavier took three pushes on his chair before Cannonball swept up behind him, took hold of the chair, and then blasted out the double doors and down the driveway.  
  
But it was all for nothing.  
  
Anthony slid through the gate as the crowd surged behind him, making their final push. The mansions internal security system had began closing the gates when it detected the crowd. Anthony hit the driveway hard when he fell, but the fear within him was a powerful motivator. He was up again and flying toward the mansion in no time, despite the fact that the crowd was caught behind the great gates at the front of the property.  
  
"Whoa there." Scott said, catching Anthony by the arm. "What's your name?"  
  
Anthony took three deep breaths and cast his eyes back towards the gate.  
  
Scott dropped to his knees and made the boy face him. "They've stopped. You're safe here. We can protect you. I promise." He had the boy's attention "Now. What's your name?"  
  
"Anthony." He said quietly before adding "Sir."  
  
"Well come inside Anthony. And you can tell me why all those people were chasing you."  
  
Anthony looked up to Scott and with all the shame he could quietly muster he said, "I broke a window sir."  
  
Cyclops felt his back stiffen. This was over a broken window?  
  
The boy then whispered "I did it with my powers." And he was ashamed as he spoke the word 'powers'.  
  
Cyclops turned his attention to the Gate. Jean was speaking and the crowd was dispersing. Wolverine, Ice Man, and Bishop stood relaxed but ready behind her.  
  
Scott turned, and took the boy in to the mansion.  
  
"Well, that was exciting." The professor smiled at the young boy. He beamed in fact. "Good morning Anthony. I am Professor Xavier. This is my school."  
  
"I like your chair." The boy said. "Does it go fast?"  
  
"Indeed, sometimes it does." The Professor smiled thinking of Cannonballs wild ride. Silently giving thanks for the fact that he didn't have any hair to fix after such events.  
  
"We have many other children here." The professor explained. "Would you like to meet them?"  
  
"I would sir." The little boy looked uncomfortable. "But."  
  
"What is it Anthony?" The Professor spoke with well-practiced and soothing tones.  
  
"I'm kind-a hungry." The boy said sheepishly. Just then his stomach groaned as if for dramatic effect.  
  
"Well we can't have that." Xavier said genuinely. "Scott, would you take Anthony to the kitchen, and then maybe out to meet some of the other students? Maybe he would like to visit Ororo's garden, or see the lake?"  
  
For a moment Anthony seemed to forget his hunger, and his worries. It was as if he were visiting a fantasyland, not hiding for his life.  
  
The moment they were gone, Jubilee slipped in to the room. "Professor?" She asked carefully.  
  
"Yes, yes, Jubilee." He smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. "Can you believe this?" He asked, "We're here. Yesterday!"  
  
"But how Professor?" Jubilee shook her head in confusion.  
  
"I don't know. But I think the Why is important." And for the first time Jubilee could see the strain yesterday had placed on Charles Xavier. "He's safe Jubilee. We saved him!"  
  
And somewhere inside her stomach, a dull knife seemed to turn. 


	2. Yesterday Ch2 Living in the Moment

During the course of the next few hours, Scott gleaned many valuable insights about the young boy Anthony.  
  
The boy liked peanut butter. He liked to play basketball although he was impossibly short for the game. And he could make a stone skip four or five times across the top of a gentle lake.  
  
He also learned about Anthony's morning. He learned that Anthony's power was something akin to temporal displacement and that he didn't so much break the window as he made it really, really old.  
  
"Everything just kind of.brakes up. And the pieces kind-a turn different colors. And sometimes as I walk though the colors, it gets real late. And sometimes it gets earlier." He looked uncomfortable "But I know it's bad. The colors aren't even REAL unless I walk in to them. They're just THERE."  
  
And Scott told him how amazing that power was and that it was not bad. Not at all. And he lifted him high in to the air so he could put the ball through the basket, again and again.  
  
But things were not this quiet in town. In town people talked. People whispered. And people made plans based on fear.  
  
Xavier on the other hand was making phone calls. When he finally finished he was disturbed.  
  
"I think the boy was abandoned." The Professor told Jean. "No one knows anything. I've made anonymous restitution for the window. I'm hoping his will all blow over." But something inside gnawed at him. Had this sort of thing ever really blown over? Since the discovery of mutant-kind? Had it ever?  
  
"I think." Jean was looking absently out the window. "If Scott wanted." She stopped again, watching Cyclops heft Anthony up to the hoop. She held her breath as the ball teetered and threatened to fall out rather than go in. Gently she nudged it in and watched the surprise register on Anthony's young face. It made her smile.  
  
"I would like to keep him here at the mansion too." The professor was smiling with a majestic understanding. "Of course I'm more of the Uncle type."  
  
And Jean had to smile as she waved a dismissive hand. She and Scott would have to talk later. She glanced again out the window and was sure of it.  
  
"Wolvie?" Jubilee approached slowly.  
  
"What is it Darlin'?" He was hunkered over his bike with a ratchet set, apparently unable to find the proper size.  
  
"The boy. The one from down at the gate." She was worried.  
  
"Yeah?" He had a feeling that this might be important.  
  
"Did you save him?"  
  
"Save him?" He looked at her sideways. "No, he was quick. Made it in to the gate all on his own."  
  
"So no one had to say, stop the crowd from beating him to death?" She ventured a 'guess' and looked back just as sideways.  
  
"No. Not that it wasn't a concern. That crowd was pretty scared. People do a lot of things when they're scared. Stupid things mostly." His eyes narrowed "Why?"  
  
She hardened her face and visibly stiffened. "No reason." She obviously lied, and she spun on her heel and walked off.  
  
"When the times right, you know where to find me." He almost growled it he said it so low.  
  
Jubilee stopped in her tracks and cast one tear-filled eye back in his direction. He stood there looking dead at her, absently wiping the engine grease from his hands.  
  
"Thanks." She whispered in a broken voice.  
  
"And be careful if you go skating in to town." He added as she disappeared around the corner.  
  
"That kid's gonna be the end of me. Or get me talking to myself." Wolverine said out loud to no one in particular as he went back to looking for a three-sixteenths.  
  
Jubilee slipped in to the security room. She found the correct moment on the tape and began to watch. Sure enough, Wolverine was right. Anthony made it through the gate a good six or eight feet in front of the mob.  
  
"Then.How?" Jubilee asked herself.  
  
But it was too late. The sun was setting, and the word had been given. The violence was about to begin. 


	3. Yesterday Ch3 Yesterday Again

Anthony didn't hear the shots. Not at first. Exactly why Cyclops had dropped to his knees was a mystery to the boy, until he fell, and rolled over, and the boy could see the blood.  
  
A blue van had been rammed through the gate at the foot of the driveway, and a group of men were firing round after round at the house.  
  
"No." Anthony shook his head as if to wake himself up. "no." He said again, taking Cyclops' lifeless hand.  
  
And he looked towards the driveway again. The men were throwing bottles, and things were burning. People rushed out of the mansion, and many were being gunned down as they stepped out of the door.  
  
"No." Anthony shook his head as he let Cyclops' hand fall from his own and he recognized these men from this morning.  
  
One man fired high in to the air and a man with white feathered wings fell to the ground in front of Anthony. He did not move, but the red of his blood sank deeply in to his soft snow white feathers.  
  
Jubilee burst through the door and took a round in the stomach.  
  
She alone saw what was to happen next. She alone heard the little boy cry out "NO!" as he took off on a mad rush toward the gunman. She alone saw the boy blur and vanish as he rushed headlong toward the men with the guns. And when she closed her eyes, she alone saw what Anthony saw.  
  
She saw him sprinting through a world of blue, indigo, and then violet. Saw him burst out of his temporal displacement, right in front of himself, as he tried desperately to make it through the gate before the crowd.  
  
Jubilee could feel the warmth draining out of her as she saw Anthony throw himself at himself. "NO!" he cried, pushing the other him back, "NO!!" and pushing him back again. She saw the shock and surprise on his younger self's face. She saw him fall and the crowd surge forward against the now closed gates. She saw the young Anthony dissappear within the crowd. And saw the wounds open on the older Anthony's face as the younger one sustained the injuries. She saw one man raise a stick from within the crowd and when it came down, the older Anthony seemed to burst, to turn to dust and vanish in to nothing, standing just where she had seen his 'ghost'.  
  
"Noooo!" She cried out loud like it was a howl.  
  
And suddenly, she snapped out of it. She was standing, barely touching the Professor, by the front gates, where yesterday, Anthony had given his life for the X-Men.  
  
Xavier was looking up, tears streaking his face. He wiped them away and tried to compose himself. "Dear lord." He exclaimed, looking down in grief.  
  
"Not hardly." Jubilee spit through her clenched teeth, staring out through the gates with angry eyes. 


End file.
